Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Review

You can once again kill hookers on the PSP.

Way, way back in March, a little title popped up on the Nintendo DS. It was known as Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and videogame critics fell over themselves complimenting the little title that could. But in deep, dark basements across the land, PSP gamers rocked themselves to sleep while weeping. For the first time in recent memory, a portable Grand Theft Auto was coming out and it wasn't coming to the PSP.

That all changes today. Yes, Chinatown Wars is out for the PSP, and yes, it's awesome.

In typical GTA fashion, Chinatown Wars casts you as a no-good loner named Huang Lee. Huang was happy to be a rich, spoiled kid eating up all of his father's money, but when his pop is murdered, Huang must return to Liberty City to pass on a family heirloom and keep the world spinning. See, Huang's father was the leader of the Triads in L.C. and his death has sparked a bit of a power struggle in the metropolis.

Of course, things are never simple in GTA. As soon as he steps off the plane, Huang is abducted, left for dead, and robbed of the sword that was his sole purpose for coming to town. With revenge on his mind, the player is launched into a tale of murder, betrayal, drugs, guns, and so much more.

If you've somehow missed all the hubbub about Chinatown Wars, this title might not be what you're expecting in terms of a traditional PSP GTA. There's no behind the back third-person perspective, no voice acting in the cutscenes, and no strive for the most realistic looking game possible. Chinatown Wars is played from an angled top-down perspective, told through some moving art cutscenes, and features a bright and vibrant look akin to an animated film. As a longtime fan of the series, there were plenty of times that I'd be blowing cars off the road with my tank or leaving foes in bright red pools of blood with my chaingun and get the throwback feel of GTA II.

That's a good thing.

There were times when I was breezing down the road on my way to a mission while following my GPS (you can set it to appear on the radar and the actual road if you like), and I would literally be taken aback by how good the action looked. The driving is fluid, the graphics are slick, and everything has polish to it.

However, beyond this new look, you're getting everything that makes a GTA game great. There's the deep story we've already touched on, but that breaks down into more than 70 story missions that have you working for different gangs, jerks, and cops in all sorts of crazy ways. One moment you're sabotaging a racecar, the next you're torching a warehouse full of marijuana, and then you're fleeing a bank robbery dressed as a Chinese dragon. The varied missions and humor you'd expect from this franchise are here in spades.

Beyond the story stuff, there are ambulance missions, vigilante missions, Chinese food delivery missions, people to find and help on the street -- like the porno actor who needs a ride to an audition while getting fluffed -- and (the crème de la crème) the act of dealing drugs.

Flames are fun.

Now, I've never sold narcotics or wacky tobaccy, but I can assure you that if it was as fun and as profitable as it is in Chinatown Wars, I'd be out on the street corner right now. In Liberty City, drug dealers are all over the place. As you're hot-rodding through town, the drug dealers will pop up as little blue dots. Once you stop and chat them up, survey their stock, and so on, they become little blue briefcases on your map so that you can stop back in whenever you feel like it. The reason behind this is that dealing drugs is the best way to make a living in Chinatown Wars.

At the end of a given mission, you'll get $50 or $200 bucks for your efforts and you can always whack someone on the street for a couple of bucks, but if you want to be able to pick up a few $3,500 Carbine Rifles from Ammu-Nation (which you now order via your PDA and have delivered to your safe house), you're going to need to start making the big bucks. Turning a profit in the drug-running game comes down to the old stock market adage "buy low, sell high."

When you start making your drug dealer connections, you'll start getting tips -- some college kids are desperate for weed and will pay through the nose, some dealer in Fishmarket South has really cheap ecstasy, etc. -- and you'll need to capitalize on those offers. When you find heroin on the cheap, buy everything you can. You're drug bag can only carry 50 units, but you can store as much as your want in your safe house. Feel free to make multiple trips, because at some point you're going to get a tip about some idiot willing to pay through the nose for a drug. That's when you strike and make a mint.